St Vincent pot growers irate at planned assault on crops

San Juan, Puerto Rico -- Aided by U.S. helicopters, Caribbean troops will hit St. Vincent next week to destroy marijuana that farmers say is vital to the economy.

Caribbean troops will be rappelling from U.S. helicopters and learning how to avoid booby traps in dense tropical foliage this weekend, preparing for a mission to destroy marijuana on the island nation of St. Vincent.

Training is beginning despite protests from hundreds of marijuana growers, who say they have no way to make a legal living.

``At this time of year, if the U.S. comes here and destroys our plantations, that will spell hardship and the business sector will feel the pinch for Christmas,'' said protest leader Junior Cottle.

His new Marijuana Farmers movement, which claims to have 800 members, sent a letter to President Clinton on Thursday demanding compensation for lost marijuana plants.

Six U.S. Marine Corps helicopters will ferry more than 120 troops from theCaribbean Regional Security Service and St. Vincent police force next week to uproot and burn marijuana plants on remote northern plots.

The two-week operation, targeting mountainous terrain near the 4,000-foot Soufriere Volcano, was requested by St. Vincent and Grenadines Prime Minister Sir James Mitchell.

Similar operations in recent years destroyed millions of plants in Trinidad, St. Kitts, St. Lucia, Dominica and Antigua. But none have stirred the kind of organized protest seen in St. Vincent.

Without their plants, the farmers say unemployment in St. Vincent and the Grenadines will rise above today's 40 percent. That, coupled with U.S. action against the Caribbean's vital banana industry, could lead to unrest, they said.

``We have 8,000 people whose livelihood depends on marijuana,'' said Cottle.

With an estimated 12,350 acres in production, St. Vincent is the eastern Caribbean's largest marijuana producer. Most is consumed on neighboring islands.

How much the marijuana crop is worth isn't known. But when the harvest comes in, soda trucks return to their Kingstown bases empty, and downtown stores do a brisker business, said Martin Barnard, president of the Chamber of Industry and Commerce.

Mitchell and other Caribbean leaders have long warned that, without a European market for their bananas, many farmers will turn to marijuana or to smuggling cocaine and heroin. In St. Vincent, with a population 110,000, the banana industry employs up to 60 percent of the work force.

U.S. officials say the Marines will only transport troops, not destroy plants. But there are risks, said Marine Lt. Col. Jeff Douglass.

Copyright 1998, The Tribune Co.

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